


My Own Mary Poppins

by anamatics



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She comes in with the wind and the rain, like Mary Poppins with a charming accent and a twinkle in her eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

i.

She comes in for the first time when the rain forms thick gray sheets that pound down against the pavement outside. It’s a slow, tired, curl up with a good book and waste the day away under a blanket sort of day.  There is fog everywhere, fog and cold and rainy breath that catches at the back of the throat. 

Myka Bering is looking particularly bedraggled today.  It seems like forever since she first opened the shop at five this morning.  An hour of prep by herself and then the dribs and drabs of the early morning crew had started to filter in.  The line cook is named Pete.  He’s ex-military and has an easy smile.  He always comes in first.  Myka opens, Pete shows up five minutes later and the first espresso shot of the day always goes to Pete.  

After Pete it’s usually Claudia, the young waitress who’s working her way towards some impossibly complicated-sounding degree involving computers, engineering and taking over the world.  Claudia takes the chairs down from where they’ve been put up on top of the tables and Myka starts the first drip. 

Early mornings are her paradise.  She runs the counter, makes the drinks with Claudia’s help, and Pete cooks the local fare that she purchases at the Saturday farmer’s market.  Together they are three – though sometimes they are four. Myka has been thinking of hiring a friend of Claudia’s to bus and help behind the counter.  His name is Steve and Claudia and he are inseparable.  

She comes in with the wind and the rain, like Mary Poppins with a charming accent and a twinkle in her eye.  She approaches the counter and Myka is grateful that the rain has slowed business to a crawl today, because this is a customer she wants to linger on.  There’s something oddly charming about this beautiful woman wrapped up in cold and wet and mystery. 

“Hello,” Myka says, but her breath is caught in her throat.  She fidgets from foot to comfortable shoed foot and reaches over to pick up a cup and her trusty retractable sharpie.  Her fingers close around it and she forces her brightest smile onto her face.  “What can I get you?” 

There’s a loud bang and then a muffled thump from the back room and Myka’s head swivels around just as she hears Pete gleefully exclaim, “THREE POINTS!” 

“The cook thinks he’s in the NBA,” Myka explains to the woman before her with a wry smile.  Her ears are burning, just a little, with the embarrassment that is Pete.  

And then she hears the accent and Myka’s knees go weak.  “Well I hope he didn’t break anything important,” the customer says with a mild quirk of her eyebrow.  She sounds foreign and exotic, like everything Myka loves about the books she reads mixed with something far darker, hidden just underneath the surface.  

Myka sets down the cup and sharpie and shrugs, her shirt catching at her ears and the apron she’s wearing digging almost painfully into the back of her neck. “It was probably just cantaloupe rind, I think he’s cutting some up for fruit cups right now.  So they’ll be really fresh if you’re interested.”

The woman considers the board above Myka.  The specials are written there in bright sunny chalk by the local artist whose work decorates the walls of the shop.  Myka smiles, as the little frills and flourishes are not really Leena’s style at all, but they’re definitely fun for her to do.  She remembers the hours that Leena spent with the chalk, outside in the summer sunshine one morning what feels like ages ago.  Myka sprayed the boards with a fixative afterwards, and now Leena’s best calligraphy is forever immortalized and mounted on the wall.  Or at least, it is until Pete decides to finally make the menu changes that he’s been promising for the past few months. “Do you blend your own teas here?” 

“No,” Myka shakes her head in the negative.  “They come from the shop on Elm,” and then she lowers her voice conspiratorially, “They’re very good though.” 

“I’ll take a pot of your gunpowder blend, then.”

 

ii.

Helena, as that is the name she has given, becomes a regular.  Myka has seen her writing and talking to Mr. Neilson, the retired college professor who is their only other regular. Mr. Neilson is an interesting study in curmudgeonly old man with a heart of gold, but he always pays for his refills and usually gets a Ruben at lunch. Myka likes him in the same way she likes her father, embracing the stern camaraderie and high expectations with regards to sandwiches for what it is and nothing more.  

The shop is Myka’s dream.  She thinks that it might finally bring her the peace that she’s longed for ever since leaving home.  She cannot go back to her father’s book store.  She is not the son in Bering & Sons. 

Helena is mystery to Myka wrapped up in charming smiles and lingering looks that make Myka pause, full of wonder. She’s never experienced something like this before. There are always guys, the sort who come in and flirt with her, but with Helena it’s different.  

And Myka?  Myka is endlessly intrigued.  She stands behind the espresso machine and cleans it listlessly, watching Helena as discretely as she can. 

Pete is whistling in the kitchen one afternoon.  Claudia’s been off for half an hour now.  She’s got school work to do, and she’s curled up with her heavily customized laptop propped up on the arm of one of the shabby overstuffed armchairs that Myka’s always chasing college students out of as she starts to close up for the day.  

This is the slow part of the day, when the shadows grow long and sunlight streams in through the front windows, filling the front of the shop with long beams of light that are broken up by the murky black figures of the shop’s patrons.  Myka loves this time of day, because the bright gold light of the setting sun seems to fill the place with a sadness that she can’t quite put into words. It’s the sort of sadness that she likes, the kind that she always sees just barely hidden behind Helena’s eyes. 

“Mykes?” Pete’s got his head poking out of the kitchen.  Myka turns and grins at him.  Her hair is frizzing and she’s exhausted.  “You wanna clear outta here?” 

Myka sets down the rag she’d been using to clean out the drainage trough at the base of the espresso machine.  “I suppose I could go,” she half hides a yawn behind her hand.  “I’m beat.” 

“You’re working twelve-hour days Mykes.  This is why you gotta hire Steve so that you can work normal hours.”  Pete shakes his head.  “You’re running ragged.” 

She supposed that she is, but she loves the two worst times of the day.  The early mornings before anyone’s around and the growing afternoons, when the sun is casting long shadows and everything just seems so otherworldly.  

Perhaps she missed her calling as a writer. 

Myka hangs up her apron and gives Pete a high five as he continues to break down and clean the kitchen.  He smiles playfully at her and Myka changes out of her coffee-stained t-shirt and pants in the bathroom before rolling them up and tucking them into her bag.  

“Headed out?” Myka jumps, startled by the question.  She’d been preoccupied with zipping up her messenger bag and attempting to collect her hair into a more manageable ponytail.  She’s got a bit of bike ride to get home. 

She looks up to see Helena leaning against the add-ins bar, her ankles crossed over rolled up pants and an intriguing scarf around her neck.  Now that Myka’s closer to her, she can see how the sunlight plays through Helena’s hair, and how she has deep, dark circles under her eyes.  

“Yeah,” Myka says, lifting her bag up and over her chest.  She settles it across her body and adjusts the strap slightly as it slides more comfortably into place.  “It’s been a long day.” 

Helena spins the ring that’s on her right ring finger almost distractedly as she smiles, slow and easy at Myka.  “I don’t suppose I could buy you a coffee?”

Myka’s heart catches in her throat and her hands shake as she reaches out to rest it on the wall in what she hopes looks casual and not completely and utterly taken aback.  She steadies herself and brings her foot up as if she’s adjusting her sock.  “Sorry?”

The sly smile that spreads across Helena’s face tells Myka that her ploy has been noticed and she feels her cheeks color in the late afternoon sunlight. 

“I want to buy you a coffee,” the smile plays across Helena’s lips is playful.  Myka can see something in her that sets her almost ill at ease.  There’s an unknown quality to Helena in this light, at this time of day.  She seems cloaked in melancholy; it shrouds her even in the bright late afternoon sunlight.  

Myka tries to think of a response that isn’t that she spends her life surrounded by coffee and tea and is rather sick of it by the end of the day.  She smiles back at Helena, eyebrow raised in challenge.  “Care to make it something stronger?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

 

iii.

Helena’s last name is Wells.  Apparently her parents have sick senses of humor, and her initials match the author of old.  Myka sits in the growing evening; her jeans rolled up just once, cuffed high, and listens to Helena’s tales.  She is out of place here, she’s just the coffee shop girl, she has reason at all to be taken out by one of her patrons.

And yet she’s oddly grateful for the attention.  It’s been long, so long, since anyone’s looked at her twice.  Myka bites her lip, scuffing the toe of her oxford in the dirt, trying not to think of Sam and the accident.  It’s been years, she has to try and move on. 

No one blames her for retreating from the promising career that she’d left behind upon the death of her lover.  Myka knows this and knows this well.  She’s just Myka now.  Not detective and the degrees she has from some of the best schools in the country carry little weight as she tries to make her way in the world. She has to be strong, keep her chin up.  She’s got another family now.

“Why did you come here?”  Myka asks at length.  Her beer is dewing, as the evening is still warm, and she traces patterns on the battered outdoor table with the water that’s run off the glass.  “This isn’t exactly a booming metropolis.”

The city really isn’t, either.  It’s growing, yes, expanding with imported industry and offices from national corporations, but at its heart, it’s still a small town.  This isn’t the place for someone like Helena, who seems far too worldly for this sort of thing.

“The same reason I suppose everyone else goes someplace new,” Helena shrugs, and the earrings that are glittering in the setting sun seem to sparkle.  “I wanted to get away from the things I knew.” 

Myka thinks about this for a long time, fingers tracing out the future in splotches of water and finally nods her understanding. “This city is a crossroads,” she says at length and Helena’s head dips to agree.

“A crossroads with both excellent coffee and beer,” Helena tips her glass and takes a sip as Myka’s cheeks flush and she shifts uncomfortably in her chair.  The bar’s lights have started to come on and they’re trapped in this strange sort of twilight that does little to ease Myka’s spirits.

Everyone knows dusk is when things start to change, Myka doesn’t like the darkness.  She likes the light and the mornings.  She likes the misty cold and growing steadily warmer as the sun advances across the sky.

“You’re flattering me,” Myka says.

“Perhaps I am,” Helena replies, not quite meeting Myka’s eyes.

“Why?”

It’s the question that’s been bothering her since Helena first came into the shop, all wrapped up in the East Wind’s embrace.  She doesn’t belong here, like a Mary Poppins of a different time and place.  Yet it is here that she’s chosen to linger and Myka cannot help but wonder as to the why. 

Helena folds her fingers together and rests her elbows on the table and her chin on her fingers.  Her hair spills down over her shoulders and seems to shine in the lamp light.  “You intrigue me, Myka.”

Well, that makes two of them.

Myka sips her beer with unhurried ease and leans back in her chair.  She crosses one leg over the other and rests her hands in her lap.  “The same could be said for you,” she knows that it’s tactless and maybe a little stupid, but Helena has been good for them, good for business, for quite some time now.  Myka wants to know more about her. 

“Do you care for puzzles?” Helena asks her then, tone mild but clearly meant to be inviting.  Myka certainly feels invited, at any case.  “I have one I need to solve.”


	2. Chapter 2

iv.

The hospital smells sterile and like death warmed over. It’s the sort of smell that burns at the nostrils, but isn’t welcoming like the smell of coffee. Coffee, Myka thinks, is the only other sort of smell that burns its way high into the sinuses and lingers there, stubborn and unrelenting.

Myka trails three steps behind Helena, bike helmet bouncing against her hip.  She’s full of nervous energy, her footfalls echoing in the stark white of the place.  She’s following because she doesn’t know better, letting Helena lead her further into the bright white and clean feeling of this house of death.

Again the why is at her lips and she thinks she knows.  This city is a crossroads, full of small town people, shocked at the sprawl that’s cropped up almost overnight.  The one claim that this city has over so many other places across the country (and the world, if it is the bragging type) is the hospital that Myka is trailing Helena through like a silent shadow.

“I went to the furthest corners of the world,” Helena explains as she pauses outside a door with no lock and no windows.  Her eyes are shining with something bright and just a little terrifying.  Myka isn’t sure that she should be here.  She feels like she’s stepped out of her element, two days after a shared beer and a challenge of a puzzle; the kind Myka’s just itching to solve.  She came after work because Helena asked her, with no other explanation than that.  She came because it felt like right thing to do. 

Still she stares blankly at Helena and Helena adds, perhaps just a bit sympathetically at Myka’s lack of ability to follow her mental process, “To find answers.”

Myka knows that there are none when the door opens and there’s a little girl lying on the bed, paler than death itself.  Her hand flies to her mouth and she turns to look at Helena in horror.  “Who…” she begins, but she knows the look that comes over Helena’s face so well that she stops in her tracks.  A mother to a sick child is a universal language, a mother who fears the worst even more so.

“My Christina,” Helena brushes her fingers against the little girl’s forehead.  Her eyes are half-lidded, full of a reverence that awes Myka.  She’s not the person to be here, she’s nowhere near equipped to deal with this sort of a situation.  Helena had been full of suave charm and debonair smiles when she’d promised Myka a puzzle.  Myka would have never thought in a lifetime that the puzzle would be a sick child.  “My darling girl,” Helena’s voice shakes as she speaks then, producing a small leather journal from her bag and turning to a page that Myka can see she has marked. 

She shifts from foot to foot, watching with wary eyes as Helena crowds in close. She can feel Helena’s breath on her cheek as she trails her fingers down the page and Myka knows her cheeks are inappropriately red, in the presence of this little girl who deserves none of her out-of-control hormones. The journal is shoved into her hands and Myka can read in beautiful script, what seems to be a riddle.  A riddle written in Greek, a language she hasn’t studied since college.

She recognizes the place and date that Helena’s marked on the top of the page.  Spring Equinox, Delphi.  Myka’s eyes widen as Helena collapses into the uncomfortable-looking armchair next to the bed and rests her elbows on her knees.  Her hands are pressed together as if she’s praying, and her face is drawn in the harsh light of this blank white hospital room.

“I traveled; I spoke to mystics and oracles because the doctors are of no help.  My Christina suffers from a disease that they cannot put into words.”  Helena scowls at the door and Myka carefully steps backwards and towards the only other chair in the room, an uncomfortable plastic contraption that seems more for ascetics than actual sitting.  She shifts uncomfortably for a few minutes before closing the book in her hands and tucking her finger into it to mark the page Helena had wanted her to see.

“A guru in Tibet,” Helena continues, and her voice sounds full and rich and not at all like the grieving mother that she appeared to be a moment ago.  Again, Myka wonders why, and again the answers don’t seem particularly inviting.  “Told me that I was looking too far from home.  That the answer was steeped in my own tradition, rather than another’s.”

“What does that mean?”  Myka wonders out loud.

Helena shrugs and it’s expressive and the room grows around her, a great white void, absolutely devoid of anything.  Everyone knows white is absence and black is everything.

“I suppose I’m a bit like all those before me, stumbling into Delphi and asking a question of the oracle there, only to receive a riddle in response.”

Helena makes a dismissive gesture and Myka can feel her mouth tumbling open, the questions already at her lips.  “What does she have?”  It’s the easiest, and the most straight-forward.  She figures that the beginning is always the best place to start.  She feels woefully out of her depth with no idea what she’s supposed to be doing in this hospital room with a desperate mother of a sick child.

“There is no name for it in English.  I read of it first in Russian and then heard tell of it in gypsy lore of Germany and Albania.  It is a sleeping sickness, and not entirely natural.”  Helena’s smile is bright and cheerful then, like she’s recounting a fond story from her childhood.  Myka wonders if Helena’s moods have always been this volatile, of if that has been brought on by her child’s illness. She seems almost manic, oscillating from one mood to the next.  ”You know the story of Sleeping Beauty?”

“That’s a story about spring rebirth though,” Myka says almost instantly.

The smile on Helena’s lips grows more sinister and she nods once.  “This is why I wanted you, Myka.”  She shakes her head.  “You are far more than just the coffee shop girl, aren’t you?”

Myka supposes that all those letters after her name and degrees from the best colleges in the country might have a purpose after all.

v.

There is no one word in the English language to describe the feeling of meeting that oracle of myth.  Helena describes the riddle and speaks the Greek and Myka finally hears the central question:  What is the one story you want to tell your daughter?

She’s a collection of nervous energy as Myka sits her down in the shop late one afternoon a few days later.  Myka’s dead tired, her whole body aching as she becomes one of the murky shadows that dot the front of the shop during the late afternoon.  Pete’s whistling in the kitchen and Claudia’s breaking down the front.  She’s got the early day today.  Pete’s making a point of telling her to rest.  Myka hates it, but she’s felt herself dragging ever since Helena approached her and asked a minute of her time.

“I fear my time is running out,” Helena confesses as Myka flips back in the journal, reading Helena’s documentation of every holy man and spiritual consultant that she met during her travels.  The notes are extensive and there are no answers contained within them.  Myka sighs and sets the book back on the battered table before her.  “Christina is not getting any better and much longer in this state… the doctors think that she’ll start to become at risk for all manner of complications.”

Myka has always been fascinated with time.  It’s the one thing that she’s never been able to control.  She’s late and early all at once, never quite able to put one foot in front of the other, everything goes back to Sam and the accident.  When she was running late and he was the one driving.  The remnants of that accident run vivid white scars up and down her back and legs.  And Sam was not so lucky.

Myka bites her lip and straightens, her knees pressed together.  She won’t think about Sam.   ”How long has she been like this?”

“At first she was just listless, and now she is wasting away,” Helena shakes her head and the sunlight catches it.  Myka knows better than to stare, but she cannot look away.  Helena Wells is a testament to the concept of classic glamor, wrapped up in a modern body and Myka wants her badly.  “She’s been asleep for three months, in the hospital for five now.”

“And you went to all those places in three months?”  Myka’s eyes widen and she’s more than a little impressed.

The smile she receives in response is almost insulting.  Helena’s looking at her as though she’s some sort of adorable country bumpkin who doesn’t understand the intricacies of modern travel, and Myka is really tempted to point out that some of the locales are really remote.  The place that Helena went in Tibet alone is well above the safe altitude to fly at, and Albania is a notoriously closed country.  Just getting in sometimes can take weeks.

Helena’s fingers wiggle suggestively and Myka raises her gaze from the book to her face.  “I have my ways of getting around.”

Myka’s just about convinced she is Mary Poppins.

The shop grows quiet as they sit in silence.  The shadows become darker and longer.  The shop closes and still they sit there.   Myka doesn’t know why Helena’s picked her to solve the mystery.  Myka isn’t sure she wants to be the one.

“Why did you pick me?” Myka asks eventually, her brow furrowing as the shadows play across the shop’s floor.  She’s been staring at them for close to an hour now, thinking about books and stories and how they’re all connected.  She’s not about to believe that Helena’s daughter will wake with a tall tale of heroes and dragons, she’s too practical for that.  But it is Helena’s belief that gives her pause.  Helena believes that this is the solution so greatly that Myka feels herself drawn in, intrigued and desperate.  Because how could that possibly be true?

Helena stretches and her fingers cut into the dusty beams of light still streaming in from the front windows.  “Because,” she explains, her body curling back in on itself, “You are a lover of books.”

vi.

Myka Bering grew up in a bookshop, raised by a lover of books and a woman who loved him despite all that.  She grew up with Kit and Nita, with D’Artagnan and the others, with Robinson Crusoe and with Elizabeth Bennett.  She grew up surrounded by the words written down by those that came and saw before.

Myka sees now, standing before the giant wall of books that was her personal collection.  She sees an impossibility and a fool’s errand.   She stands tall, and turns to Helena, who is eating cereal as it is all Myka keeps in the house, “What sort of stories does your daughter like?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple, Myka,” Helena confesses and Myka sighs.  It’s close to eight now.  She’s got to go to bed soon or tomorrow at the shop is going to be murder.  She cracks her back, rolling her shoulders backwards, and walks over to Helena. 

Her feet fall lightly on her carpeted floor and Myka feels halfway to graceful as she sits down next to Helena.  “I know,” she confesses.  Because that is always how these things work.

She wants Helena, seeing her slightly undone and eating cereal on her couch only makes the want more. She knows it’s wrong, but to feel the press of their bodies next to each other is enough to make Myka’s hands tremble as she reaches forward to pick up her well-thumbed copy of  _The Time Machine._

“I’ve always had a very adversarial relationship with time,” Helena says, setting down the bowl and staring hard at the book in Myka’s hands.  She turns towards Myka, her leg pressing more firmly against Myka’s own.  Myka feels her cheeks burn but wills herself to stay still as Helena confesses, “I’m always bucking up against it, trying to fight it for all I’m worth.  I feel a fool, sometimes.”

“You’re racing the clock,” Myka says, because she knows that feeling all too well.  “You’re not traveling to a different world.”

Helena’s eyes flutter closed and Myka’s breath catches.  She’s not answering the question for a reason, Myka knows this.  But as Helena’s fingers reach out hesitantly to touch her hair, Myka can’t really remember what she was thinking.  She’s always been the timid one, but it’s a bold move to even want Helena.  She exhales, her breath feeling hot and wet and not at all attractive.

When Helena kisses her, it is sweet and innocent.  Youthful and not entirely worldly.  There’s an element to the kiss that Myka cannot place and she shifts, almost uncomfortable with the idea of it as Helena pushes her backwards onto the couch. 

There is a story that isn’t told, but it’s one that should be. 

Myka wonders if the story is of attraction, love or lust. She wonders if she’s amenable to the idea of it being all three.

And then she doesn’t wonder anything at all.


	3. Chapter 3

vii.

Steam and heat fill the shop.  It's barely six thirty and there's a rush on.  It's hot, so unbelievably hot behind the counter and Myka's slowly counting to ten as she completes orders, listening with half an ear as Pete bangs around in the kitchen.  He's making breakfast sandwiches and bagels, crafting brilliance out of simple ingredients.  He's at his best when he's like this.

One.  Myka's face itches.  She knows better than to reach up and scratch it as her fingers are wrapped around a mug that belongs to the stuck-up looking banker across the counter from her.  She'll be sure to pitch a fit and be very annoyed to hear that Myka is the one in charge.

Two.  No, it's better to just ignore such things. Myka bites her tongue to distract herself from the prickly pain that grows just underneath her eye and blossoms across her cheek.  This is the time to be moving, advancing.  Forward, the song says, is all.

Three.  The morning rush is like a dance.  Each step is carefully choreographed for maximum efficacy and to create the best possible product.

Myka and Claudia dance around each other.  Four.  Myka turns on the steamer and blasts heat into some milk, Claudia takes the metal mug from her and adds in two shots of espresso.  They hand off that order and move on to the next one.

Five.  Somewhere in the background, Pete is singing along to Kesha on the radio.  Myka wants to roll her eyes, to tell him that that hardly constitutes music, but she knows she should not judge.  The tune is catchy after all, the kind designed to take up residence in your ears and stay there all day.  She knows all the words as it is, she supposes that it just isn't what she calls rock and roll.

The espresso machine is cleaned off with a rag that really should be changed out.  Myka takes it and tosses it under the sink and grabs a fresh one from under the register.  She steps around Claudia and an iced raspberry tea and mocha and goes back to her cleaning.  Six.

The line is thinning out, and Myka exhales.  It's nearly seven thirty now, and the time has flown by.  The morning is still the morning and they're still going to be busy for some time.  She exhales as Claudia dodges around her with a plate full of eggs and toast. This is when she can finally breathe freely, once the first rush is gone and the mist outside has cleared to show the sky once more.

Seven.

Helena comes in then, scarf around her neck and shivering despite the fact that its summer and the forecasts say that it should be warm for the rest of the week.  The mornings are what are cold.  Cold and barren as the night, only warming with the sun as it cuts a swath of light across the sky.  She meanders her way up to the counter and settles herself, leaning against it with a smile that doesn't look nearly as bright as before.

Myka knows she should be better.  She knows that she should be a lot of things - that she has a task to complete for Helena and then this will probably all be over.  Perhaps she's a fool for wanting to linger in the not knowing and the puzzle part of things.

(She's always liked puzzles.)

"Hello," Helena says smoothly, all early morning bleariness and just a little bit of the mist seems to be clinging to her.  She's cold and pale and doesn't quite seem all there.  Myka wants to reach out, to hold her and push back the fog of darkness and bring her into the bright summer sunlight.  "The usual?"

Myka rings her up for gun power tea.  Eight.

She knows that Helena is a writer, and she wonders how private she is about her own writing.  Her preferred penname is already used, but Myka is sure that Helena can think of another.  She shifts from foot to foot as she selects the loose tea and packs it into an infuser.  She adds a little more than she would usually as she can see the circles under Helena's eyes.

Nine.  Myka steps around Pete this time, coming out with three plates of bagels and eggs. He grins at her, all cheeky and dimples.  Myka smiles back at him, because he's the brother that she never had wrapped up in a big goofy shell.

He'd known when Myka had come late to do prep that morning after Helena had proven that she was quiet skilled at far more than just driving Myka mad with her mysteries.  He'd seen how she had a fond smile on her face all day and he'd been able to infer what had happened.

"I'm not gay, Pete," she'd confessed on her lunch break that day.  She'd been sitting, picking at her sandwich and Pete was puttering around in the kitchen, straightening things and getting ready to make a batch of granola for the morning breakfast rush.  She'd run her hands through her hair, trying to figure out what exactly had happened with Helena.  "She's just like..."

Pete had smiled serenely at her and had told Myka to not worry about the labels.  They change all the time anyway.  "You fell in love," he'd said, and Myka had nearly choked on her sandwich.

She hadn't realized it'd gotten that bad.

Myka watches Helena take her tea and disappear off to the tables towards the front windows.  She nods to Mr. Neilson, who scowls at her, and settles into her usual spot.  Ten.

 

viii.

"Did anything happen to Christina, to make her fall ill?"  Myka asks tiredly that afternoon.  She's got to hire Steve, she's dead on her feet and they're still going to be open for another three hours.  She pulls out her running grocery list and adds 'call Steve' to the top of it.  She'll do it later tonight, once she's sat with Helena for long enough to ascertain if her theory has any merit at all.

Over the course of her life, growing up in her father's bookshop, Myka has heard strange tales.  There are books, ancient tomes full of dark secrets, secrets that change a person.  Her father had told her stories when she was a child, about a book that could suck away your very soul.

Helena sips her tea and stares at Myka with that calculating gaze that Myka's come to hate being on the receiving end of.  She shifts, uncomfortable as Helena sets her cup down.

"I was reading to her.  Just So Stories," Helena explains with a fond smile.  Her lips quirk upwards then and Myka moves forward, trying to catch that smile and keep it there.  She'd read those stories herself as a kid.  Stories with lessons and fantastic takes on evolutionary concepts.  "The Crab that Played with the Sea, I think."

Myka's thinking quickly now.  Wondering if the story's content has anything to do with the ebb of Christina's life.  She chews on her lip and doesn't look at anything in particular.  Its overcast today, and they are not quite shadows.

Except that they are.  They are shadows dancing across the sunny canvas that is life at this point in time.  There is tea and there are biscuits.  There maybe are even scones when Myka's feeling awake enough in the morning to harass Pete into cooking them.

"Do you still have the book?"  Myka asks quietly.

Helena nods.  "I read it to her every time I go to see her," she says and then shakes her head.  "I'm positive that it isn't the book we're looking for."

Myka isn't so sure.

Claudia drifts by and tells Myka that they're out of milk.  Again.

"Take five bucks out of petty cash and go get some," Myka says, jerking her finger towards the door.  There's a grocer around the corner that carries gallons.  "I'll cover the counter."

She's met with a tired smile and a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach.  Claudia disappears back towards the counter and Myka stands.  She knows that she has no choice now.  Helena's still looking at her distant, looking at her nearly crossways.  She's not seeing Myka at all.

Helena stands abruptly, tucking her bag under her arm and picking up her cup of tea.  She downs it one large gulp and winces as she swallows.  "Darling, I've just had an idea," she says, and leans forward, her breath smelling of tea and the muffin she ate earlier.  "I've been reading her forwards, but maybe I have to read her backwards and out of this lull."

Myka's brow furrows, and then her eyes widen.  Yes! That would follow the same sort of bizarre logic that they've been forced to follow this entire time.  "Try that," she says, and Helena kisses her full on the mouth.

"I'll send word," Helena replies and brushes past Myka.  She's standing alone in the middle of her shop, her cheeks on fire as Claudia makes happy noises from behind the counter where she's got the petty cash pouch out and is digging through it, looking for a five.

"Seriously, Mykes," Pete says, brandishing a spatula at her.  "That was adorable."

"I half expected her to say 'jinkies,'" Claudia laughs and waves the five as she bounces towards the door.  Myka has no idea where her energy comes from.

Myka supposes that there are worse fates.

 

ix.

It is not an easy process, but Myka's theory and Helena's idea prove to be the correct one.  It is not easy to read backwards.  A story seems like gibberish mixed with the obscene at times.  Kipling would never approve of his work being read backwards as it is now, sitting in a white white white hospital room and rocking back and forth.  Prayers, words, whispered to God and anyone else who might be listening.

And Christina?

Christina wakes up full of youthful energy and a distrust for her surroundings so acute that Myka wonders what sort of a home Helena had before she came to this city.

As fall starts to turn the days cooler and Myka's mornings on her bicycle turn into harrowing adventures of dodging around iced-over puddles and air so cold that her eyes prickle and tear up at the corners.

The wind changes abruptly from the sweet smell of summer and spring to the harsh bark of the north.  Myka can smell the change before she sees the signs and shivers in the new breeze.

Helena comes to the shop then, and she has Christina with her.  Myka makes them tea and is grateful that she's convinced Pete to make scones that morning. They share the scone between the three of them, Myka nibbling because she’s sick to her stomach just looking at how perfect Helena is with Christina.  That is a mother, a mother in love with her daughter.  Myka has no place in their little family.

"I have to go away," Helena confesses as Christina crawls into her lap, her wool jacket looking oddly dated in the world of hyper-modern winter outdoors-wear.  Myka wonders why Helena favors wool sweaters and stockings and vintage looking coats.

Myka knew that this was coming.  She's not a fool, after all.  Helena came in on the west wind, all manic and desperate and Myka had fallen in love.

"I'll be back," Helena promises with a kiss after the rush is over and Myka has a minute to come and sit with them.  Christina is a quiet child, all wide dark eyes and questions. She still loves Just So Stories, but Helena won't read them to her anymore.

There's a sort of sigh that is drawn out then, where Myka's apron digs painfully into the back of her neck and her fingers rake through her hair, desperate for something more than summer sun-kissed love.

Helena is a being that belongs in the sunlight, blessed with shadow.  Myka sees her as that and nothing more.  She’s desperately in love, but she knows better than to believe such a promise.  That's what the book says after all, pie crust.  Easily made.  Easily broken.

So Myka?

Myka doesn't believe her.

She's gone on a Tuesday, nary a trace of her left. Myka finds the book that caused all this sitting on top of another, one she can't help but stare at for a long time, wonder dawning on her face.

_The Time Machine_

_a novel by HG Wells_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that is the end of the coffee shop au. I do not hold trademark on the idea, so feel free to write your own.


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